TEHRAN - The spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry has chastised Western nations for penning and supporting a UN resolution that is critical of Iran, asserting that they lacked the authority to advocate for human rights.

Nasser Kanaani made the comments on Thursday one day after the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee adopted a resolution written by Canada criticizing what they called Iran’s mistreatment of women and girls.

“How is it that the U.S. and some Western countries do not see the massacre of children and women by the occupying Israeli regime in Gaza and instead issue a resolution against Iran by repeating baseless claims founded on false information and dishonest generalizations?” he said.

 “These countries are not in a position to advise the Iranian government and people on human rights given their long history of systematic rights violation,” Kanaani said in reference to the full support given by the U.S., Canada, and certain other Western states for the Israeli regime to commit war crimes, genocide, and other atrocities against the defenseless Palestinian people. 

He went on to say that the anti-Iran document’s “one-sided and unrealistic” sections “lack legitimacy and validity.”

Along with criticizing the countries who supported the UN resolution, the Iranian diplomat said that they were “abusing the sublime concepts and values of human rights to promote their own short-sighted political objectives.”

He pointed out that the Western nations’ “blatant hypocrisy and sheer lies” concerning human rights were exposed by the anti-Iran resolution that was passed in the midst of apathy to Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Kanaani highlighted that Iran’s Islamic establishment is built on a religious democracy and has always taken its international commitments to advance human rights seriously and willingly. 

In reaction to the Canadian crafted resolution against Iran, Tehran’s ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the UN Zahra Ershadi also on Wednesday took aim at Ottawa for bringing up the politically driven resolution against the human rights situation in Iran, maintaining that Canada had also rejected another resolution that called for an end to the Israeli regime’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

She stated that Canada and the co-sponsors had submitted a country-specific resolution while voting down a resolution calling for an end to the Israeli regime’s slaughter of Palestinian women and children.

According to the diplomat, such a juxtaposition exposes Canada and its partners’ double standards when it comes to human rights.

Since October 7, when Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying regime, Israel has commenced a bloody campaign on the blockaded Gaza Strip that a top UN official in New York recently resigned his post and called the events in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide” in which Western governments have been “wholly complicit”.

In addition to killing more than 11,000 civilians, Israel has also imposed a complete siege on the coastal sliver, depriving the more than two million Palestinian residents of their water, food, fuel, and power.

In an emotional statement on Wednesday, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said, “Today I visited the Gaza Strip to meet with children, their families and UNICEF staff. What I saw and heard was devastating. They have endured repeated bombardment, loss and displacement. Inside the Strip, there is nowhere safe for Gaza’s one million children to turn.”